PM fails responsible govt test: US analyst

Tony Abbott is shifting the Liberals towards George W Bush's brand of compassionate conservatism, while Labor has failed to live up to the responsible governments of the Hawke-Keating era.

That's the verdict of Mary Kissel, an editorial board member of the influential Wall Street Journal.

The New York-based columnist, who once worked for investment bank Goldman Sachs and is a keen observer of Australian politics, delivered the frank assessment of the Gillard Labor government and the coalition opposition during a speech at the National Press Club.

Kissel praised Australia's fiscal position, describing it as a "dream" compared with the United States, which was "effectively Greece now" under President Barack Obama.

But she described the Rudd-Gillard Labor government as a "throwback to the 70s and the Whitlam years", following three decades of "responsible government" under prime ministers Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and John Howard.

"It was big spending, it was a re-emergence of labour unions, higher taxes, a green agenda," she told the press club in Canberra on Tuesday.

"There are parallels to the Obama administration and what we are seeing in Australia is an instinct or a reflex to move back towards the centre."

But under the leadership of Tony Abbott, the Liberal party was shifting toward a position of "compassionate conservatism", she said.

"I see aspects of Tony Abbott that remind me very much of George W Bush, not in foreign policy but talking domestically where he would be very willing, for example, to have a tax increase to give new mums time off from work," Kissel said.

"This is a dangerous instinct for conservatives.

"He needs to speak to that small government, low-tax program that has been so successful for him during this odd era of Rudd-Gillard politics."

Kissel said Labor could not assume the "Howard battlers" who swung behind Kevin Rudd at the 2007 federal election, and some of whom backed the party in 2010, would remain loyal.

One of Labor's biggest failings was the "fundamental disloyalty" of Gillard's broken promise on the carbon tax, she said.

"It left room for the coalition to exploit that and take some of those battlers back," she said.

Kissel was impressed by Abbott's ability to turn something "abstract" like the carbon tax into a hip-pocket issue.

Asked about the American Tea Party movement - which Swan has described as "extremist" - Kissel described it as a "grass-roots movement".

"It's not an extremist movement, simply because you could not attract such disparate people to an extremist group, it wouldn't be so widespread and it wouldn't be so nationwide," she said.

"It was a cry for fairness and a push back against cronyism."

As for the 2013 federal election, Kissel says the fact Abbott has stayed at the helm of the Liberals for so long in a "rough and tumble" political environment showed he was a "very successful leader".